Cal Poly, UCB, UCSD, UCLA, Purdue, UIUC or Texas A&M Engineering?

My son is accepted to some of those colleges and still waiting on some of those schools. Currently we have difficult choosing from Purdue and Cal Poly. We have not visited most of them ( expect UCB ) but due to the virus, we probably are not going to. Had anyone toured some of those campus or had experience with them? Any insight will be appreciated.

Cost of each?

Purdue and Texas A&M admit to first year engineering, with a secondary admission process to get into the major after the first year. The others admit directly to major, so there is no worry about continuing in the major, but changing major can be difficult (and if the student is admitted to general undeclared instead of his desired engineering major, getting into the engineering major will be difficult).

@ucbalumnus We are in California. Cal poly (ME) is the cheapest choice for us. Purdue ( COE) OOS tuition is pretty comparable to UC in state. Plus kid want to go as far as they can …

Purdue is a nice campus. It is a rather rural setting so I guess that should be considered. We checked a few of the CoE buildings and liked what we saw. My son spent a few days in a dorm as he was also there for a bowling camp. I’m a history kind of guy and it’s very close to the Tippecanoe battle field which I enjoyed visiting. We had a very positive experience there. If they had offered any merit money, it would have been a bigger contender at the end of the day.

If you are paying list price, Purdue (out-of-state) is about $44k ($42k + $2k engineering upcharge), while UCs are about $32-36k, and CPSLO is about $29k.

Seems like Purdue is not a good deal at a higher price and having to compete for secondary admission to major.

My D is a second year engineering student at Purdue. One of the things that really appealed to her about the Purdue campus is that engineering is really their priority. The center of campus is the engineering mall. Tons of money goes into their facilities. It’s a lovely, well maintained campus. Great school spirit, fun traditions, sports, music, etc…

Do you have any specific questions I could help you answer?

@momofsenior1 thank you!

  1. how hard for kids to get the major of their choice? My son is interested in Mechanical Engineering. I heard that Purdue has the lowest average GPA compare to other major engineering university. Is it hard to get the first choice major?

2, how are kids treat each other? Some universities can be very competitive and kids are not willing to help each other. Some universities really emphasize on team work and collaboration. What is Purdue like?

3, my son is white-Asian mix and we are from California. I am a little worried about culture shock since my son never spend too much time outside CA. How diverse or tolerant are kids in Purdue. One thing I really like about Purdue is it has 17% international students but most of them are MS students. What is like for undergraduates program?

4, what is the class size? Is there many classes with 200+ kids?

5, how hard to get in the class you need? I know lots universities in CA are so packed that kids could not get the class they need so they have to delay graduate. What is like in Purdue? Can kids always get in the class they need?

  1. The transition to major was very smooth for my D. Students need a 3.2 engineering index (basically the GPA with only STEM courses) to be guaranteed their first choice major. Purdue says the percentage of students getting their first choice is 94%+ so most students do transition successfully.

As an aside, my D really enjoyed the first year engineering curriculum.

  1. Purdue is super collaborative and supportive! It was one of the big things my D was looking for in a campus environment. Students seemed much more relaxed and happy than at other schools we went to see.
  2. There is great diversity at Purdue. Kids from all over the country. I haven't heard of any intolerance. https://www.admissions.purdue.edu/academics/enrollment.php
  3. Class size varies greatly. My D had two courses freshman year with under 20 students and some with close to 400 (and everything in between). Any large lecture has a mandatory recitation with less than 25 students so there is plenty of opportunity to get questions answered and work better through difficult concepts.
  4. Purdue has a commitment to students to get through in 8 semesters. Students within a major will get priority first. We've been very impressed with advising. Your student may not get their ideal time for a class, but they'll get into whatever they need to stay on track to graduate on time.

@momofsenior1 thank you so much.

Regarding diversity, Purdue is approximately tied for least SES diversity (with CPSLO and UCB), and has relatively low ethnic diversity compared to the California schools and UIUC (percentages listed in order of largest to smallest groups, but the order of groups is not the same for each college). Information from https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/


College         %Pell   %FA     Ethnicity
Purdue          17      50      64/14/9/5/3/3/2/0/0
CPSLO           16      52      54/17/13/8/5/2/1/0/0
UCB             19      49      35/25/15/13/6/4/2/0/0
UCLA            29      55      28/27/22/12/5/3/2/0/0
UCSD            36      57      34/20/19/18/5/2/2/0/0
UIUC            25      49      44/19/16/12/6/3/1/0/0
Texas A&M       23      56      60/24/8/3/3/1/0/0/0

You probably want to ask Purdue how competitive ME specifically is in the secondary admission process. 94% getting into the first choice major may not be the same for all majors.

@ucbalumnus . . . Your fourth slash-percentage is presumably the International cohort. I’m surprised that Purdue’s and TAMU’s is so low at 5% and 3%. Just wanted to point out that a lot of these students are from East and South Asia, and they’re heavily Engineering/CS-based.

https://www.purdue.edu/datadigest/?dashboard=EnrollmentBars_1 Gives you a more updated look at Purdue’s undergraduate student body within the school of engineering.

Non-resident alien could be any of the numbers in the order, and not necessarily the same for each school.

In Purdue’s case, it is the second number (14%), while in Texas A&M’s case, it is the sixth number (1%).

A T2M process with a 98%+ rate with a 2.75, 93% with the minimum 2.0, is a reason not to attend a top 10 national engineering school?

Did you get rejected from Purdue or something?

Are you using the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants? Purdue’s in-state total cost is $23k, unchanged since 2012, compared to the $32-36k for CA you mentioned above, with over 50% in-state students. Just maybe their low rate of actual Pell grant receipts is because it’s not needed (59% graduate with no debt, 44% higher than the national average).

Both Purdue and Cal Poly are great options. My son graduated from Poly with a BS/MS in ME and my niece attends Purdue as a BME major.

Classes will be smaller across the board at Cal Poly. As I recall, the Physics series is capped at 42 and the Calc series is capped at 35 per section. Students enter in major and start ME classes day one. There is extremely limited use of TAs at Poly, because without a PhD program (more on that later) there’s a tiny pool to pull TAs from. Nearly all courses are taught by instructors with terminal degrees including labs and discussions. That doesn’t guarantee they’ll all be great. Practical experience comes in the form of a lab for nearly every class, even the very mathy advanced ones like vibrations and rotational dynamics. There are over 80 in the CENG alone. They also have a vibrant club scene and very robust year long senior project requirement. The weather and location are idyllic. The same cannot be said of either for Purdue.

I know very little about Purdue, but it’s my understanding that they also put a heavy emphasis on graduating engineers that are prepared to be productive from day one. I’m assuming they have some way to get students the practical experience they need to do that. The research going on at Purdue is much broader and better funded because they have a doctoral program. I don’t know how easy it is for undergraduates to get involved. There is research at Poly, but they are smaller practical application projects like the Boundary Layer Data System my son worked on rather than bigger picture theory research. Purdue also has something really lacking at Cal Poly…big time athletics (unless soccer is your thing).

All in all both (all the schools referenced for that matter) are very good programs. Each of us who have/had kids at them tend to advocate for them because that’s what we know. Feel free to PM me with any questions or if you’d like more private information like my son’s portfolio, starting salary, etc.

Congrats to your son! At the end of the day it’s far more about what he does with his opportunities than it is about where he goes.

But they do not specify which majors are the more selective ones. If the rejects are all in the students desired major because it is the only one that is enrolled to capacity, then the overall admission rate is deceptive. This is similar to frosh admission to some colleges, where specific majors (often engineering majors) are much more selective than what the college’s overall admission rate may imply.

It would be better if they showed admission rates and GPAs for admission to each major.